The San Diego City Council, meeting in a special session today, is set to consider granting a contract worth up to $500,000 to the law firm Latham & Watkins at the request of city attorney Jan Goldsmith to represent the city in defending against litigation related to alleged violations of the California Environmental Quality Act as a result of offshore fireworks displays.

On the other side of the issue, lawyer Marco Gonzalez of Coast Law Group has prevailed in the first three suits to be decided by superior court. Gonzalez has been representing the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation, has served as official counsel for the Surfrider Foundation’s San Diego chapter, and is now going public with an admonition against city attorney Jan Goldsmith for recommending the hiring of Latham & Watkins as outside counsel.

First, Gonzalez says, Goldsmith has gone on record in recent years with an article in the city attorney’s newsletter entitled Taking Back Outside Counsel Cases that boasts of the cost savings realized by the attorney keeping most litigation in-house.

“There is a role for outside private law firms assisting the City in cases where it is impossible or impracticable for the City Attorney’s Office to act as the City’s lawyers. These are situations involving conflicts of interests or special areas of practice,” writes Goldsmith in the piece, making the case that there remain exceptions to his stated policy of preferring in-house representation.

Gonzalez then goes on to suggest that a conflict of interest itself exists with the Latham firm, as it was hired to represent the La Jolla Community Fireworks Foundation – against whom Gonzalez successfully argued in 2011 that debris from exploding shells could be harming marine life in a nearby sanctuary and that review of the matter was needed. The judgment that year was stayed to allow the Fourth of July fireworks display to continue.

Comments

At first glance it looks like Goldsmith is a double talker....but he is correct in that a conflict of interest is a time when another firm should handle the litigation, but I don't see it in this fireworks case.....